The colony is a retreat where musical theater creators can work on new projects for a month,

The colony, which will house artists at Goodspeed Jan. 22 through mid-May, dovetails with the Goodspeed Festival of New Musicals, held in and around the Goodspeed Opera House Jan. 18 to 20. The festival hosts public readings of three musicals-in-progress as well as seminars, presentations and cabaret performances. The Mercer colony does not offer any public performances. The two events offer musical theater creators a chance to commune, share their work and spend serious time in a supportive, musical-loving environment.

Among the 22 projects being worked on by the 34 writers and composers in the 2019 colony are Matt Vinson and Matte O’Brien, who are working on a musical adaptation of “Anne of Green Gables”; “Hot Gay Time Machine” creators Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, whose new project is “Diva”; the multi-talented Marshall Pailet (“Who’s Your Baghdaddy”), who’s doing the music, lyrics and book for his new show “Private Gomer”; composer Ray Leslee, who’s setting the poems of Maya Angelou to music for “Maya Songs”; queer non-binary composer/lyricist/book writer Orion Johnstone with “Whole Sex”; and the latest, as-yet-untitled work by Yale School of Drama grad Janet Allard and composer Niko Tsakalakos.

Jonathan Brielle, who’ll be there working on the new shows “A Complicated Woman: The John Kenley Story” with Sam Salmond and Ianne Fields Steward and “Wild Sound” with New Haven-based playwright Tom Coash, also serves as the colony’s “producer/writer in residence,” while Clifford Lee Johnson III is the designated “resident dramaturge.”

More information on both the Goodspeed Festival of New Musicals and the Johnny Mercer Foundation Writers Colony is at goodspeed.org.